Saving Money (And The World) With Mojo Power
The bad news: Our ex-International Man of Mystery has no job at the moment, so household budgets are totally squeezed.
The good news: We are about to save money on our electricity bill.
Life is all swings and roundabouts, isn’t it?
We have a new, improved (reduced) household budget and we need to be sensible.
Our humungous electricity bills have driven me mad for ages. Here’s why:
- They are paid every three months when monthly would be so much easier to budget for
- I find the bills hard to read and understand
- What is a kWh of energy anyway?
- I got a 7% discount last year but a 16% discount this year… Whaat?
- I don’t really understand how my solar panels work and how much energy they provide us
- It’s hard to remember when the peak, shoulder and cheap periods are
See below for the full horror of our family’s last five electricity bills:
This post is brought to you by Nuffnang and Mojo Power
I’m sure our pool uses heaps of electricity in summer, and the reverse cycle aircon uses heaps in winter, plus a bit for in summer too.
Oh dear!!
We love our backyard pool but it’s a big electricity user.
So we’ve switched over to Mojo
Mojo is a brand new electricity provider, started in 2015 with the aim of:
- simplifying the whole system for customers
- helping customers use less power and thus save money
- being more transparent than the bigger power retailers
How Mojo Saves Customers Money
Mojo customers pay wholesale energy rates, which are much cheaper than the retail rates charged by other energy companies.
To access these rates, customers pay an EnergyPass™ subscription, ours is $45 a month.
Mojo customers pay their bills monthly; I know I will love this.
Mojo says that larger families like ours, who use a lot of power, will gain the most by switching over.
The image above shows the retail rates we have been paying.
Mojo’s wholesale rates are much cheaper, see image below.
NB: Other energy companies’ mark-up wholesale rates to a retail rate.
Just like a shop, that mark-up is what the company uses to run their business and make profits. Thus the more energy you, the customer, uses, the more the energy company makes.
Most energy companies don’t have an incentive to help you get your bill down as they make less money if you use less power.
How Mojo Helps You Use Less Electricity
Mojo installs a new smart meter at your house under their Plus+ and Premium EnergyPass™ options.
An online portal shows your actual energy use in real time and you can see this on your smartphone.
Mojo has the long-term goal of helping customers to use more solar and then to store their own electricity and even share and sell it over local networks.
Read more at: http://www.mojopower.com.au/meet-mojo/
But Isn’t Switching Companies A Pain?
Actually no, it’s easy. I’ve just signed up with Mojo online and they take care of the rest. There’s a 10 business day cooling off period and then it will take a few weeks to get the new meter in and the bills switched over.
I am expecting my old company to call me up and offer to give me a better discount if I sign up with them again long-term. But I’m not falling for that old chestnut. Why didn’t I have the best deal before? Harumph!
Mojo is a small company based in Sydney. I can email Mojo and or do a live chat via the website if I have any questions.
Read more about Mojo on the website here.
Follow Mojo on Facebook here.
Now then… that’s the electricity bill budget sorted out. Next we better work on food, medical, phone and internet bills, and those credit killers, wine and coffees.
Time to send the kids out to work. Or make them a running wheel that generates electricity.
I’m planning to report back on how our switch to Mojo is helping us in daily life, so stand by for that when the system is up and running in a few weeks’ time.
Meanwhile, I’m reading up on ways to save power… all your ideas welcome.
And can I ask…do you understand your electricity bills? Does it annoy you that different discounts are offered randomly so everyone pays different amounts?
Have you thought of changing power companies?
PS: I’ll leave you with an image of the biggest electricity bill we ever had. We were paying extra to support Green Power at the time, but that bill was just too much and we had to stop.
Disclaimer on disclaimer: I first heard about Mojo through my agent and then saw huge billboards at our local bus stops. This is a sponsored post however I had switched our family over to Mojo before the sponsored post was committed to, because we need to save cash!